4 ms·

Germany used to be extremely restrictive about the set of character sequences that were allowed as given names. Some of that is probably still in place. When ev

by usrusr 3y ago

Germany used to be extremely restrictive about the set of character sequences that were allowed as given names. Some of that is probably still in place. When everybody was called Fritz or Hans or Gundula plus some word describing an ancestor's profession (it's all following the pattern of Smith and Miller), the order didn't really matter and that freedom was liberally abused: contexts that use the formal as identifier (Schmidt, Müller) and the given name only as a tie-breaker on collision will happily put the family name first, despite the reverse being specified in the terms themselves (Vorname and Nachname translate to pre, post, they really don't leave anything open to interpretation). But those informal regional order conventions? I read them as formalized disrespect for the individual: "you're not Hans who happens to be a Müller, you're a Müller who happens to be Hans. And the Müllers, they are part of us, so subsume!" Those regional things can be quite peculiar: a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her family took over, at some point between the thirty years war and the industrial revolution.

Akronymus 3y ago
> a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. I disambiguate my grandparents via the name of the farmhouse they live in, rather than the last names. I am from austria. But I dunno how common that is.
morkalork 3y ago
>sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her That has a very "part of the crew, part of the ship" feeling to it. Work the land, become the land, you're named for the land that you work! With marital status, who your father was, your family's occupation, and where you're working, all in a name, résumés needn't be a thing.
weinzierl 3y ago
When I was a child in Bavaria I was often called by house name + given name, in that order, especially by the elderly. The house name is different from the family name which appears in official documents like the birth certificate. Another difference between northern and southern Germany is the Münchner-Du and the Hamburger-Sie. In standard German we use the formal pronoun Sie with the last name in formal situations and the informal pronoun Du with the given name in informal situations. Nowadays in semi-formal situations, like between colleagues at work, it's completely informal but two or three decades ago it wasn't. Officially the workplace was supposed to be formal and often it was, but in many cases a mixture between formal and informal forms was common. In the north people tended to use the formal Sie but in conjunction with the given name, like Markus, können sie bitte das Auto holen." (Marcus, can thee get the car, please.), whereas in Bavaria the opposite combination of informal Du combined with the family name was prevalent, like *"Du, Frau Müller, kannst Du bitte das Auto holen." (You, Mrs. Miller, can you get the car please.)
- usrusr 3y ago
  Aren't those name/pronoun mismatches in both cases a clear expression of status gradient? "I consider you close but I certainly don't consider you a peer". I suppose that neither of those drivers would reply in similar form. (though far less unlikely in the munich variant I think). An exception would be a recurring pattern of ironically using the family name like a nickname in youth language. Perhaps male only youth language, but very much an entirely different thing from those Munich/Hamburg oddities.
  - weinzierl 3y ago
    I'm from Bavaria, so can only really speak about the Munich version with some confidence, and I think it is usually used symmetrically. The German Wikipedia entry about the Hamburger-Sie specifically discusses the status gradient, so you definitely have a point there. Maybe it is even true for the Munich version and I just never heard it used like that.
- mhink 3y ago
  > Marcus, can thee get the car, please. Two notes: First, you'd use "thou" here, as it's the nominative case, and the correct conjugation would be "canst". Secondly, "thee" and "thou" were very much the form used to speak to a close friend or social inferior in early modern English. "You" functioned more like French "vous" or German "Sie"- as either a plural formation or a formal address of a social superior. With that in mind, it would probably be more accurate to say that they should be rendered "Marcus, can you get the car, please?" and "Mrs. Miller, canst thou get the car, please?" And notice the parallel between "canst thou" and "kannst Du"!

by usrusr 3y ago

Akronymus 3y ago

> a childhood memory of my mother (northern Germany) is that as a child she was sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. I disambiguate my grandparents via the name of the farmhouse they live in, rather than the last names. I am from austria. But I dunno how common that is.

morkalork 3y ago

>sometimes referred to as given name + name of the family farm, I suspect not in that order. With that farm's name still being the name of the family that ran ran it before her That has a very "part of the crew, part of the ship" feeling to it. Work the land, become the land, you're named for the land that you work! With marital status, who your father was, your family's occupation, and where you're working, all in a name, résumés needn't be a thing.

weinzierl 3y ago

When I was a child in Bavaria I was often called by house name + given name, in that order, especially by the elderly. The house name is different from the family name which appears in official documents like the birth certificate. Another difference between northern and southern Germany is the Münchner-Du and the Hamburger-Sie. In standard German we use the formal pronoun Sie with the last name in formal situations and the informal pronoun Du with the given name in informal situations. Nowadays in semi-formal situations, like between colleagues at work, it's completely informal but two or three decades ago it wasn't. Officially the workplace was supposed to be formal and often it was, but in many cases a mixture between formal and informal forms was common. In the north people tended to use the formal Sie but in conjunction with the given name, like Markus, können sie bitte das Auto holen." (Marcus, can thee get the car, please.), whereas in Bavaria the opposite combination of informal Du combined with the family name was prevalent, like *"Du, Frau Müller, kannst Du bitte das Auto holen." (You, Mrs. Miller, can you get the car please.)

usrusr 3y ago
Aren't those name/pronoun mismatches in both cases a clear expression of status gradient? "I consider you close but I certainly don't consider you a peer". I suppose that neither of those drivers would reply in similar form. (though far less unlikely in the munich variant I think). An exception would be a recurring pattern of ironically using the family name like a nickname in youth language. Perhaps male only youth language, but very much an entirely different thing from those Munich/Hamburg oddities.
- weinzierl 3y ago
  I'm from Bavaria, so can only really speak about the Munich version with some confidence, and I think it is usually used symmetrically. The German Wikipedia entry about the Hamburger-Sie specifically discusses the status gradient, so you definitely have a point there. Maybe it is even true for the Munich version and I just never heard it used like that.
mhink 3y ago
> Marcus, can thee get the car, please. Two notes: First, you'd use "thou" here, as it's the nominative case, and the correct conjugation would be "canst". Secondly, "thee" and "thou" were very much the form used to speak to a close friend or social inferior in early modern English. "You" functioned more like French "vous" or German "Sie"- as either a plural formation or a formal address of a social superior. With that in mind, it would probably be more accurate to say that they should be rendered "Marcus, can you get the car, please?" and "Mrs. Miller, canst thou get the car, please?" And notice the parallel between "canst thou" and "kannst Du"!